Since December 2007, the private sector has shed more than 7.5 million jobs and decreased by 6.6 percent. But Rea Hederman, research fellow and assistant director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, compares that to the federal workforce's numbers.

"The federal government has increased by almost 12 percent of total workers," he reports. "Over 230,000 new federal workers have been hired in the last three years," excluding census and postal workers.